Browsing: Silicon Savannah

• The Google product development centre in Nairobi has been launched weeks after Visa set up its first innovation centre in Africa
• Google, Microsoft and Visa join Cisco and Philips in setting up innovation centres strengthening Kenya’s Silicon Savannah moniker
• Visa’s innovation studio is the first in Africa and the sixth globally

The Google product development centre in Nairobi, Kenya has launched just two weeks after Visa set up its first innovation centre for the co-creation of payment and commerce solutions with partners.

Google, Microsoft and Visa join Cisco and Philips in setting up innovation centres strengthening Kenya’s Silicon Savannah moniker and as a tech investment hub in East Africa.

The tech giant’s facility, the first of its kind on the continent, is to create products and services that will have a significant impact on the African continent and beyond.

Besides the research and development centre, Microsoft has also …

Even as mobile penetration continue to grow, the East Africa region is still sluggish in technology innovations especially in the insurance sector.

The region is considered as Africa’s Silicon Savannah with a high mobile penetration, home grown digital financial innovations like M-PESA that is now being exported in other countries and a fast growing tech start –up ecosystem.

Statistics indicate that about $63.6 billion is transacted in aggregate in a single year on mobile money platforms in the East African Community (EAC) countries. This corresponds to 46 percent of the total GDP of the EAC in the most recent statistics.

Mobile is a key factor in the region’s start-up ecosystem where many tech start-ups now use the technology as the primary platform to create solutions that address various socioeconomic challenges.

According to the GSM Association, a trade body that represents the interests of mobile network operators globally, over half of …